Build A Website

A website can be an important marketing tool for almost every small business, but there are a few exceptions. There's no question that a website is more mission-critical for some businesses than others. Companies trying to reach customers in different locations (think hotels or tourist attractions) or who have products that can be shipped to customers far away (think flowers, handmade dolls, etc.) obviously need to have an online presence.

Having a website is the one form of marketing your business that just keeps on giving! But how do you know if you need a website?

Well, with the amount of information that is available with just a few keystrokes or clicks of the mouse, why wouldn’t you want your business’ information to be included?

More and more people and businesses use the Internet to find information. Whether it is locally or internationally, the Internet is the one place where they are likely to find what they are looking for. Unless, of course, they are looking for you or your product and you don’t have a site.

Having a website allows your business to advertise 24 hours a day, seven days a week and it is available whenever someone is in need of information on your product or services. The elements you include on your website are a determining factor for how successful a marketing device it will be for you.

The 6-Step Process for building a website

When it comes to building a website, it helps to have a process to follow. Keep in mind there is a parallel process with all of this its called Feedback. It helps to get as much feedback from the you to build a better website. So let’s get to it.

The 6 steps are as follows:

Requirements Analysis

Discovering and understanding what you need to build in the first place — is the most important part of the entire website design process.

Think of it like this: If you are an archer, don’t you need to know where to aim your arrow? That’s what the target is for. The little red dot in the middle is the bullseye. Since it’s smaller, it’s harder to hit, but even if you aim for it and miss, you’re sure to get closer than if you aimed your arrow up into the air and hoped for a random direct hit.

Getting clear of your final product will cut short the guesses while planning and development phase of the project.
At GulfCyberTech, we do a complete study on your requirements and visualize the final goal of the project so it meets your requirements and business goals.

Planning

Once the learning phase in technical after the GAP analysis is done we have clear picture of the product to be delivered.
In this phase we plan to achieve the final goal perceived from the step 1. We do the research, take notes, prepare sketches and mock-ups to bring the requirements learned to a sample form so we have a visual goal to shoot for.

Failing to plan is simply, planning to fail.

At GulfCyberTech, we take this step very seriously by brainstorming ideas and creating a mock-up of the requirements we get. Our designers, use top-notch design tools to present you with a high-quality mockup.

During the planning phase, it is incredibly important to seek feedback often to make sure all specified requirements have been met. If the client wants to make changes, now is the time to do it before the design is sliced and coded, making it ten times more difficult to make what would be a simple change if you were to do it during the planning phase.

Designing

At this step, you are clear of your final goal and know what you want the final product to look. We start preparing the HTML layout based on the design you were satisfied up on and work our way to bring the look and feel of the final product to reality.

This is the phase which has all the design elements prepared in the previous phases come to life on the webpage which has animations, sliders, news widgets etc. based on your requirement.

We use technologies like HTML5, CSS3, jQuery etc. to bring the mock-up pages to reality with pixel perfect quality in designs.
At this stage all the design elements are sliced and prepared as minor elements in the html to form the complete design after the html layout is completed.

For better quality we optimize our images and the html markups for faster loading pages and make that the work is laoding at an optimal speed using tools like FireBug and YSlow.

Development

This is an optional field based on the requirements. Most clients opt for a CMS for managing their website so they can update the website instantly without having to know any technical knowledge.

The design which is in the html layout format is made into a CMS using various programming languages like ASP.NET, PHP, JAVA etc. and other back-end tools like MSSQL, MYSQL, Oracle, JDBC etc. depending on the clients requirements.

At GulfCybertech, being a software development company, we specialize in developing the most reliable and redundant platform for your website.

At this phase we go through the logic of the program and design a workflow of the entire process which gives a clear visualization of the working of the website. Based on the client’s requirements, we will be adding various modules like latest news, job portals, property managements, CRM etc. all on one platform giving you the flexibility to access multiple features without having to maintain different applications for that purpose.

All applications developed by us undergo rigorous testing making sure that all attempts to bypass the security feature is closed and the application is safe to launch.

Launch

This is usually the final phase of the development. At this phase the designs, development & Quality Assurance Testing of the website is done and ready to launch.

All web applications or websites developed under specific configurations require a robust platform to work on. The security feature implemented on the platform goes a long way as far as application security is concerned.

Choosing the right host is a cumbersome process for many non-technical people. Having your content or application hosted on an external server is highly unreliable as the server is physically located at a place which is not conveniently reachable.
Keeping these factors in mind, we have developed our own windows servers in-house with the latest security feature implemented. We power and maintain the hosting server for 99% of our clients in Oman.

Since most of our applications and websites are based on .NET framework we have hand-picked the level of security and the physical components for maximum performance and security.

Maintain

The last and the ongoing phase for any website or web application is the maintenance. A website once launched is like a real estate property. Periodic maintenance is required to take care of your “web-property” as it is the face of your company on the internet.

Maintenance include, optimizing the web graphics, code, SEO, Server optimization for maximum performance and a lot of other technical factors to it.

As your business grows in the future more challenges which can be handles efficiently using an online system will come your way. All these new requirements can be implemented into the code without interfering any of the maintenance factors mentioned above. Hence, helping you to have a competitive edge on the eMarketplace a.k.a the internet.